Westerns
have been a staple of moviemaking ever since 1903 and The Great Train
Robbery. As filmmaking moved on to California and bigger budgets, Westerns
followed, sometimes as big budget “A” productions, but more often than not as
“B” programmers. Cecil B. DeMille’s full-length feature (74 minutes), The
Squaw Man, returned 10 times its budget at the box office (it cost around
$20,000 to make) and alerted Hollywood to the profits that could be made from
the genre. In 1923, Paramount made the first big-budget Western, The
Covered Wagon. Costing an estimated $782,000 to make, a major sum at the time,
it returned about $3.8 million in receipts.
The Iron Horse,
from Fox, followed a year later, directed by the already-veteran John Ford.
Made for about $250,000, it returned over $2 million. Even more important to
our story, the film starred an unknown who went on to become one of the biggest
stars of the silent era for Fox. His name was George O’Brien.
O’Brien
grew up in California, the son Daniel O’Brien, a San Francisco policeman who
rose to become Chief of Police, and later, California Director of Penology. As
a policeman, Dan was assigned for a time to the Mounted Unit. It was as a boy
that George spent his spare hours at the stable, caring for the horse, and more
importantly, learning to ride. A natural athlete, he enrolled at Santa
Clara College to study medicine. When America entered World War I, O’Brien left
to join the Navy and volunteered to serve as a stretcher-bearer with the
Marines, where he was decorated several times for bravery under fire. His
athletic ability enabled him to become Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the
Pacific Fleet.
After
the war, a chance meeting with Tom Mix led to a job as a camera assistant with
Mix’s production company. From there, he broadened his horizons to prop man,
extra, stunt man, and finally, bit player. Word on the grapevine alerted him to
the fact that Ford was casting his new film The Iron Horse, and
O’Brien took a screen test. Ford, impressed with the test, and the fact that
O’Brien knew how to ride a horse, signed him for the lead over the studio’s
objections. The film became a hit and O’Brien became a star.
He
followed it up with several features for Fox and was directed by such as Jack
Conway, Rowland V. Lee and Howard Hawks, in addition to Ford. Then came F.W.
Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans in 1927, recognized as
one of the all-time classics of American cinema. O’Brien played a simple farmer
married to Janet Gaynor. Trouble brews when a fallen woman from the city
(Margaret Livingston) tries to convince him to drown his wife. But all’s well
that ends well and husband and wife are reunited. In addition to increasing
O’Brien’s fame, the picture made Gaynor into an instant star. She received the
Academy Award for this film, among others, in 1929.
O’Brien’s
star, however, was about to fall. In 1928, he starred for Warners in Noah’s
Ark, a big-budget epic about Noah and the Great Flood with a parallel story
about soldiers in the First World War. Like The Jazz Singer it
was primarily a silent film with talking sequences. But no amount of talking
could save this confusing mess. It bombed at the box office and only upon its
release in Europe did it come close to making back its $1.5 million budget.
They
say a hit is only good until your next hit, but a bomb lasts forever. This was
certainly the case with O’Brien, who now found himself reduced to
lower-budgeted films. He might have been out of a job altogether if it were not
for the advent of sound and the coming of the Great Depression. The studios
soon discovered that sound was not enough – audiences were used to a full
program and demanded that if they were to come to the movies. Thus the double
feature now became the norm. Coupled with a newsreel and a cartoon or short, a
family could have an entire night’s work of cheap entertainment. And, who knows?
They could always win something on “Dish Night” or at “Screeno.”
When
it came to lower-budgeted movies, studios could rely on independent studios or
producers for product. Or they could make it themselves. And what genre was
more suited for a lower budget than the good old Western? All a producer needed
was a couple of horses, a plot of land, a script, a director, and a cast on the
cheap. The Depression dictated a buyer’s market and there were plenty of actors
willing to star in just about anything in order to earn a paycheck. George
O’Brien was among them – and George O’Brien had something they didn’t. He was a
trained horseman. In other words he wouldn’t give the impression on the screen
of having never been more West than 10th Avenue in Manhattan.
Thus
began O’Brien’s career in B-Westerns. He was good, and he built a following
with such films as Riders of the Purple Sage, The Rainbow
Trail, and The Gay Caballero. His first films for Fox came from
established pulp writers such as Zane Gray and Max Brand, but as the need for
product became greater, producers relied more on original stories. Also, when
needed to save money, footage from silent westerns could be inserted.
Although
O’Brien would appear in a few films outside the genre, such as Ever
Since Eve (1934) and Hard Rock Harrigan (1935), he was
wedded to the Western. And they all made money, establishing him as the number
one B-cowboy star, even bigger than his main competition: an actor that bombed
in the big-budget Fox Western The Big Trail in 1931, and who
later went to Warners as a B-player in mostly Westerns, and later to Monogram,
where he became a singing cowboy: John Wayne.
In
1934, O’Brien began working for producer Sol Lesser, who used such companies as
Atherton Productions and Principal Productions as corporate fronts. David
Howard was one of Lesser’s directors, and when Howard left for RKO, O’Brien
went with him. At first, everything was fine with the financial ledger, but
then, Timber Stampede (1939) became the first of O’Brien’s Westerns
to lose money. Whether the public was tiring of him or whether it was
nervousness over the war in Europe is unknown. O’Brien’s last film for RKO was Triple
Justice in 1940. When America declared war on Japan in 1941, O’Brien
once again enlisted in the Navy, seeing action in the Pacific and was decorated
several times. After the war, when he could not find film work, his old
director John Ford gave him a few small roles. He also starred in Gold
Raiders with The Three
Stooges (Moe, Larry and Shemp) for United Artists in 1951.
His
time spent away from home during the war probably doomed his 15-year marriage
to actress Marguerite Churchill and they divorced in 1948. When the Korean
Conflict broke out, he again served with the Navy, and would do so again during
the Vietnam War, finally leaving the service with the rank of captain and
having been recommended for admiral four times. He moved to Oklahoma, where he
began ranching, but a heart attack forced this man of action to his bed for the
last few years of his life. He breathed his last on September 4, 1985 in Tulsa.
Below
are three representative films of O’Brien that were recently shown on TCM (July
31, 2012).
GUN LAW (1938)
– While on his way to clean up the town of Gunsight, Arizona (How’s that for a
name?), Marshal Tom O’Malley (O’Brien) is ambushed by a man he put in jail but
who escaped, The Raven (Edward Pawley), and relived of his clothes, horse and
canteen of water. Forced to walk, Tom catches up with The Raven at a water
hole. It seems that The Raven drank from a contaminated spring and dies in
front of the Marshal. Searching for The Raven, O’Malley finds a note of
introduction to one Flash Arnold (Robert Glecker), who runs Gunsight while
robbing stagecoaches for a sideline. By sheer luck, Tom is picked up by a
preacher (Frank O’Connor) and his comely daughter (Rita Oehmen), who are on
their way to town to open a church.
Once
in town, Tom pretends to be The Raven, whom no one in town has met. Tom also
gets the lowdown from undercover man Sam McGee (Ray Whitley), who works in
Arnold’s saloon as an entertainer and bartender. O’Malley tells him that he
figures Arnold is not the head honcho and he’s looking to catch both Arnold and
Mister Big. By now we have learned that the mayor is that man, working with
Arnold robbing stages. From there, it’s a matter of time and a little plot as
to how Marshal Tom gets his men. In the end he rides them to the jail in the
next town and promises the preacher’s daughter that he’ll be back. It’s a
relatively simple plot that couldn’t be more telegraphed if it was written by
Western Union. When the mayor visits his partner, Arnold, it’s all supposed to
be on the QT. But then we see later the mayor ambling down the backstairs in
broad daylight. But we all know that intricate plots are not the reason why we
watch. No, we watch for the sheer enjoyment it brings to see a veteran
like O’Brien in action – and doing his own stunt work, by the way. Look for
Ward Bond in an early role as one of Arnold’s henchmen. Also, watch for Ray
Whitley’s scenes. It’s a good thing he can sing, because he sure can’t act. He
makes William Shatner look like Laurence Olivier in comparison. As a musician,
though, Whitley wrote the famous “Back in the Saddle Again,” among others, and
managed The Sons of the Pioneers.
THE FIGHTING GRINGO (1939) – Wade Barton (O’Brien) leads a band of
troubleshooters whose duty is to help the oppressed and the innocent. While
breaking up an attempted robbery of a stagecoach he makes the acquaintance of
Nita Del Campo (Lupita Tovar). Naturally, she’s taken with him and invites him
to a fiesta at her father’s hacienda. At the film moves on, both the audience
and Wade learn that there’s some work afoot to cheat Senor Del Campo (Lucio
Villegas) out of his land. Behind the dirty deeds are John Courtney (LeRoy Mason)
and his foreman, Ben Wallace (William Royle). During a heated private argument
between Del Campo and Courtney, Wallace knocks out Del Campo and shoots
Courtney to death, framing Del Campo. Wallace figures to cash in as he’s
engaged to Courtney’s sister. Things look bleak for Del Campo, but Wade manages
to save the day by turning Wallace and his dimwitted right-hand man, Rance
Potter (Glenn Strange), against each other in order to get one to confess. Watch
for Ben Johnson making his film debut in a small scene as a barfly at the
cantina where Del Campos is hiding. All in all, this is the best of the three
movies.
TIMBER STAMPEDE (1939) – This time O’Brien is Scott Baylor, a cattleman
tending his herd in the rich timberlands. (This is certainly one on me. I
thought cattlemen raised their herds on the prairie, not in the woods.) Con men
Jay Jones (Poverty Row stalwart Guy Usher) and Foss Dunlap (Morgan Wallace) are
plotting to strip the town of Wagon Wheel (Another great name!) of the
timberland by promising to build a railroad, but in reality stripping the land
of its trees. In tow with the baddies is reporter Anne Carr (Marjorie
Reynolds), whom they duped into glorifying their efforts to “further the
progress of the West.” When Scott’s uncle Henry (Earl Dwire), who owns the
town’s newspaper, The Wagon Wheel Clarion, (Must reading
in Wagon Wheel) publishes articles accusing the railroad of legalized larceny,
Jones and Dunlap buy the paper out from under him and install Carr as
Editor-In-Chief so she can write flattering articles about the progress the
railroad is making.
In
addition, Jones and Dunlap take over the local saloon and hang a sign out front
reading “Cowboys Not Welcome.” It doesn’t get any more obvious than that. Jones
is also paying drifters and his loggers to claim additional acres of land under
the Homestead Act and then sign their claims over to him. When Sheriff Lyman
(Bob Burns) investigates, Jones’s hired gun Matt Chaflin (Robert Fiske) murders
him and then is appointed sheriff by Jones. Anne, for her part, refuses to
believe any of Scott’s accusations, so he and sidekick Whopper Hatch (Chill
Wills) pose as potential homesteaders and snap a photo of Jones paying the
drifters. Showing the evidence to Anne, she joins them, and with the help of
Uncle Henry, publishes an edition of the Clarion
with the photo and accompanying article exposing the fraud. Chaflin forms a
posse to arrest Scott for the murder of Sheriff Lyman, and Scott holds them off
at the newspaper office while Whopper rides for help among the other cattlemen.
They arrive in time to save Scott’s bacon, and Scott outduels Chaflin as
well. The town and the forest are saved, and Jones and Dunlap are carted
off to the hoosegow. But as Whopper notes, Scott is also going to serve a life
sentence, but with Anne. While the plot has the usual holes one would expect in
a B-movie, the acting is uniformly good and Reynolds stands out as the most
beautiful of O’Brien’s leading ladies. It was only a matter of time until she
would get her big breakthrough. Watch for Billy Benefit in a small role as the
printing devil of Uncle Henry.
The Writer would like to thank his Colleague and Friend, Steven
Herte, for his assistance in editing the article.
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